Earth Hour images

Kamchatka Peninsula

3 April 2012

Our Earth is itself a fragile ‘spaceship’, but we tend to forget this in our everyday lives. Sometimes distance is required from a subject to appreciate it fully. ESA astronaut André Kuipers is taking photographs of Earth from 400 km out in space, to remind us just how beautiful and vulnerable our planet is.

Last Saturday, during ‘Earth Hour’, people all over the world turned off non-essential lights to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate change. Earth Hour was supported by André, who is an ambassador for the World Wide Fund for Nature, and ESA.

But, when the time came to turn off the lights at 20:30, André was still too busy unloading ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle, ATV Edoardo Amaldi. Although he could not observe the event directly, André sent a Twitter message from space while in darkness over Africa: “Yesterday was a very busy day with ATV, so not much time to look...”

He tweeted: “I hope #EarthHour was a success. And that it has helped highlight the scarce resources and vulnerability of our planet.”

ESA released new images taken by André previously over the weekend. Browse the images below and help us preserve our habitat and its resources.